ROMANCE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Marie (Caroline Trousselard), a grade-school teacher with average looks, has a host of problems, most of them sexual, in ROMANCE. Her boyfriend, Paul (Sagamore Stévenin), who refuses to have sex with her, tells her frankly that he'd rather be alone reading a book or hanging out with his male buddies at the local bar. "I need to cling to him like a leech because I'm madly in love with him," she explains to us in her constant and insufferable narration. She has a proclivity to carry on didactic philosophical discussions of sexual issues while having sex, a definite turn off to her partners.
She compensates for her boyfriend's not giving her the sex and the baby that she wants by having kinky sex with friends and strangers.
ROMANCE by writer/director Catherine Breillat is described in the press notes as "a daring exploration of female sexuality from a female point of view." Featuring an order of magnitude more explicit sex than any movie this side of a porn film, the graphic depictions are as joyless and unerotic as a medical textbook. Even if Breillat has her actors performing actual, not simulated, oral sex, she does it with such a clinical detachment that the only reason to applaud the film is for the risks it is willing to take. Making it especially hard to endure, ROMANCE's energy level is as low as its depressed heroine's.
Certainly we have had a large number of movies than explore violence with graphic realism, so why can't similar ones be made with sexual realism? After all, we as a society are much more threatened by violence than sex. Whereas there is a case that can be made for making something this sexually explicit, this movie fails spectacularly. The heroine is one notch above an automaton, thanks to the remoteness of the director's approach.
Marie doesn't respect the men she picks up. She'll do absolutely anything with them (the camera makes sure that nothing is hidden), but she looks away during the act and will use her lips for anything but kissing the men on the lips.
A typical episode has her being seduced by a middle-age man, Robert (François Berléand), who likes to tie his women up. In an excessively serious picture that is never intentionally funny, these scenes of ropes and chains and Marie's contorted positions may have some laughing out loud, since they are so ludicrous. Robert, who admits that he isn't handsome, wealthy, or attractive, claims to have made love to over 10,000 women. His secret? He's a good listener. He has other boasts too, all equally bizarre.
If you're inclined to check this movie out only because of the titillation factor, don't. There isn't an exciting moment to be found in it. On the contrary, monasteries might be advised to hold recruiting drives in the lobbies. If sex is this miserable, abstinence may be an attractive alternative.
ROMANCE runs 1:35. The film is in French with English subtitles. The movie, which was not submitted to the MPAA for rating, is filled with actual sex scenes and frequent nudity and would not be appropriate for anyone other than an adult.
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